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The district’s meetings have been roiled by debate over whether to allow transgender students on sports teams and in bathrooms that match their gender identities, with activists repeatedly protesting the current board’s reluctance to limit protections for transgender students. Smith’s candidacy was shaped in part by her contact with Parents’ Rights in Education Maine, the Topsham-based chapter of a national nonprofit that helps train and advise school board candidates across the state. The parents’ rights organization is part of a loose web of overlapping conservative groups pushing to restrict transgender student rights on a statewide and district-by-district basis. Along with the Maine Education Initiative, a project run by firebrand former Rep. Heidi Sampson, R-Alfred, the group has urged parents across Maine to turn out to their local school board meetings and push for policy changes they see as necessary to protect female students. So far this year, at least eight school districts have changed their policies regarding transgender students. Activists connected to PRIE and MEI were involved in each decision. Parents’ Rights in Education offers training for those looking to advocate for greater parental oversight of school policy, with occasional meetings encouraging parents to run for office, and training sessions aimed at helping candidates win their campaigns. It has hosted over a dozen events in Maine in the past year. The group also scores candidates and elected officials on a 0-100 scale based on questions about trans rights, drag queens and book bans. Allen Sarvinas, the director of Maine’s PRIE chapter, said he was not certain how many school board members or candidates had attended their meetings this year. PRIE’s website lists four current candidates in Maine, including Smith, as having taken the group’s policy quiz. Each has a score of 100. Ten current or recent school board members across the state also have published scores on the site, as do several state lawmakers, though the website includes a disclaimer that it does not verify respondents’ identities. Sarvinas said the group is struggling to keep up with demand. PRIE’s mission is to train school board candidates on how to win elections and train parents and grandparents on how to speak up for their beliefs at local meetings. Meanwhile, MEI, an offshoot of the conservative think tank the Maine Policy Institute, directs them on how to pass conservative policy on trans rights. In some districts that approved policy changes this year, boards passed resolutions that match the language of a sample policy created by MEI. Under Maine’s Human Rights Act, schools cannot discriminate against students based on their gender identities. When President Trump returned to the White House this January, one of his first major actions was a push to restrict trans student rights. His administration released an executive order asserting that Title IX, the landmark law barring sex discrimination, meant transgender girls could not play sports alongside cisgender ones. Citing Maine’s protections for trans students, the administration moved to withhold funds. While the dispute between federal and state law is worked out by the courts, law firms like Drummond Woodsum, which works with many school districts in Maine, have advised against changing policies. Sarvinas said he believes Drummond Woodsum and other law firms in the state are biased toward the left. PRIE and MEI have pushed districts to seek second legal opinions, or to disregard legal counsel entirely. At an August training, Sarvinas claimed credit for “flipping” boards in RSU 73 and RSU 24, both of which recently passed anti-trans resolutions. “Candidates reach out to us,” he told The Maine Monitor in a recent interview. “I personally help them figure out their campaign and how it was going to do and certain things to help.” On a Wednesday evening at the end of summer, around two dozen people streamed into Moss Brook Church in South Paris for a training event hosted by PRIE and MEI. A few were parents of young students; most were grandparents. In the church’s foyer, concerned citizens grazed on hors d’oeuvres and picked through promotional leaflets from PRIE, Maine Girl Dads and the campaign of Robert Wessels, who is running for the Republican nomination in the race for governor. After signing in, the crowd was ushered into a windowless meeting room with high ceilings and bright overhead lights. There, Sampson told the group that the key was to act fast and to allow any opposition to burn itself out. “You have to be super focused because the other side’s going to be like [these] screeching hyenas at you. And they get like that,” she said. “And our side, our allies, need to stay calm, cool, and collected.” Sampson said the time to push for anti-trans policy in school boards had come. This summer, the state’s Human Rights Commission indicated it had no plans to act against school boards changing their policies. Sampson called that a “green light.” “We’re on a full court press here, trying to apply the pressure,” she said at the August event. “We are in a really critical time right now… We need to continue to push this forward.” In October, Augusta’s school board voted 6-2 to revisit its transgender student policies only “if and when” the issue is settled in the courts. If elected, Kelly Smith will join those hoping to revisit the matter sooner. “It feels like it’s such a priority, because so many people in our community are worried about this issue,” she said. “They’re worried about protecting their spaces and sports for our girls.” Daniel O’Connor is a Report for America corps member who covers rural government as part of the partnership between the Bangor Daily News and The Maine Monitor, with additional support from BDN and Monitor readers.
